Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has announced a plan for the military to study the “readiness implications of welcoming transgender persons to serve openly.”

This study, which will take place over the next 6 months will study the effects of transgender people in the armed forces but also review all military dismissal forms from those with gender dysphoria. This is an issue the White House has been pushing for some time.

At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they’re able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite,” Carter said. “Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – real, patriotic Americans – who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.”

This move is being criticized by many in both the political and medical fields who see allowing those with gender dysphoria to serve, not an issue of patriotism but one of allowing mentally unstable people to serve.

Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry once wrote, “policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.”

Over the next 6 months, this issue will be examined both within the military and outside of it and will surely be an issue on the 2016 campaign trail.

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From CNN:

(CNN)The Pentagon could in the coming months lift the ban on transgender people openly serving in the U.S. military, after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Monday a plan to study “readiness implications of welcoming transgender persons to serve openly.”

Carter made the announcement in a memo outlining a pair of directives to both study the effect of transgender service men and women over the next sixth months, as well as adding the new protocol that any personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who identify as transgender will have their paperwork for dismissal from the military reviewed at the highest personnel levels in DOD.

“At a time when our troops have learned from experience that the most important qualification for service members should be whether they’re able and willing to do their job, our officers and enlisted personnel are faced with certain rules that tell them the opposite,” Carter wrote in his statement. “Moreover, we have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – real, patriotic Americans – who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit.”

The White House has been pressing the Pentagon to move ahead to lift the ban, following the high court ruling but several top department officials have made the case time is needed to determine how several medical and legal issues will be dealt with, a U.S. Defense official told CNN.